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Is a million dollars a reasonable price? The point I make is that you might not be able to tell a reasonable price, per se. But you can generally tell an unreas

Is a million dollars a reasonable price? The point I make is that you might not be able to tell a reasonable price, per se. But you can generally tell an unreasonable price. It's some x-rays, animal quality anesthesia/meds, and labor. It's hard to see how this reasonably adds up to $10,000. Were time not an issue, they could probably take a trip to Mexico, get the operation done for maybe a few hundred dollars, and come back home, all for much less money than the vet was asking. And the reason I think that's particularly relevant is that it's not like the underlying costs really change. That clinic in Mexico is probably importing those drugs and machines from the exact same places. So developing world costs tend to give you a 'raw materials' cost, where all that's left is labor + profit.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> Is a million dollars a reasonable price? If you can’t find someone else to sell to you for less, then yes. Barring broken markets such as due to regulatory capture, etc. > The point I make is that you might not be able to tell a reasonable price, per se. >But you can generally tell an unreasonable price. These strike me as conflicting statements, otherwise I don’t know what per se means. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37846041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37846041 > And the reason I think that's particularly relevant is that it's not like the underlying costs really change. >So developing world costs tend to give you a 'raw materials' cost, where all that's left is labor + profit. Why are labor costs not underlying costs? How about liability insurance? Real estate?
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Markets can break not only on the supply side, but also on the demand side. When consumers become unaware or uninterested in the baseline cost of what they're purchasing (or in econobabble - when the price elasticity of demand approaches zero), you end up with grossly inefficient markets because companies lose any incentive to meaningfully compete on price. The point of looking at 'raw materials' cost is that if the costs on top of said raw materials becomes more than the cost of doing business elsewhere (such as in a different country), then one would be wise to do just that. This is the whole reason things like medical tourism exists. It's not like other countries are getting their machines, medicines, and so on for that much less. It's just they're able to reduce the cost of everything on top of raw materials to the point that one can afford to take a 'holiday' half way around the world, get their issue fixed, and make it back all for less, often vastly less, than it'd cost to do stateside.
alwa 3y ago
I have to imagine that a skewer in the squishy parts could result in a wide range of potential injuries. Maybe the specific injury here was just an “x-ray and pliers” kind of job as you suggest, but suppose this particular skewer skewered one or more organs, or resulted in some kind of awful hemorrhage or something. I could just as easily imagine the sort of injury that would require intricate surgeries and a lengthy hospital recovery, implying the round-the-clock attention of a number of specialized humans with mouths to feed and other career prospects (including patching up human animals instead!). Euthanasia might be the only humane option in an x-ray-and-pliers outfit not staffed and equipped to perform such an heroic sort of intervention in the timeframe it would take to succeed. One thing that does stand out to me is the extreme shortage of people willing to become veterinarians, even at these prices. It seems like regardless of the pricing on the retail end, capable young people considering modern veterinary life are sizing up the entire financial, emotional, educational, and lifestyle bargain and not finding the payoff to be worth it. That said, I am sympathetic to the idea that modern veterinary practice has strayed too far from the way it’s done in lesser-resourced settings. Maybe it is more appropriate to set aside advanced and expensive medical techniques in favor of more cheaply-educated practitioners, more conventional business hours, simpler tools and supplies, more frequent recourse to euthanasia, and so on. The blessing and the curse of modern medicine, no? It’s bad enough to have to face death when it feels inevitable, when “all that can be done to save them” is relatively simple and well-understood. Knowing that the same situation might be survivable under different circumstances—with more money, or in a place with the right practitioner, or if we’d just had this particular exotic antivenom in stock, or if the line had been shorter that night, or if we could hire some bioengineers and a lab to custom-tailor a treatment to puppy’s genes… the same death then comes with a lingering feeling of guilt over the possibility that more could have been done.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  You're creating a false dichotomy. Animals swallowing things, being hit by vehicles, attacked by other animals, jumping from 8 story buildings (and living), and so on all cause similar groups of internal injuries - often life threatening. Yes it requires expertise and work to treat them - that's exactly what the job of a vet is. It's not like you go to a vet in the developing world with a puppy suffering severe internal injuries, from whatever reason, and they just shrug and ask if you want to euthanize. Quite the opposite I expect you'd see dramatically less euthanasia in the developing world (though a quick search unsurprisingly turned up very little in the way of data). But I think the logic should be clear enough. Pets make everybody's lives better and more enjoyable, but very few people could afford to even think about dropping $10,000 on a puppy. Those prices are just a fast-track to mass euthanasia and depressed vets.
jncfhnb 3y ago
> It's some x-rays, animal quality anesthesia/meds, and labor. It's hard to see how this reasonably adds up to $10,000. You should open a vet office then. Sounds like you’re well equipped to undercut competition and still make a hefty profit! Or maybe you’re just making things up. Because we’re talking about an emergency open and close surgery to remove what’s probably a long sharp object with puncturing of the stomach. On a small animal. On immediate short notice (cancel everything else!). It’s going to be difficult with multiple doctors. And it’s going to require a lot of post surgery care.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> Is a million dollars a reasonable price? If you can’t find someone else to sell to you for less, then yes. Barring broken markets such as due to regulatory capture, etc. > The point I make is that you might not be able to tell a reasonable price, per se. >But you can generally tell an unreasonable price. These strike me as conflicting statements, otherwise I don’t know what per se means. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37846041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37846041 > And the reason I think that's particularly relevant is that it's not like the underlying costs really change. >So developing world costs tend to give you a 'raw materials' cost, where all that's left is labor + profit. Why are labor costs not underlying costs? How about liability insurance? Real estate?

somenameforme 3y ago
Markets can break not only on the supply side, but also on the demand side. When consumers become unaware or uninterested in the baseline cost of what they're purchasing (or in econobabble - when the price elasticity of demand approaches zero), you end up with grossly inefficient markets because companies lose any incentive to meaningfully compete on price. The point of looking at 'raw materials' cost is that if the costs on top of said raw materials becomes more than the cost of doing business elsewhere (such as in a different country), then one would be wise to do just that. This is the whole reason things like medical tourism exists. It's not like other countries are getting their machines, medicines, and so on for that much less. It's just they're able to reduce the cost of everything on top of raw materials to the point that one can afford to take a 'holiday' half way around the world, get their issue fixed, and make it back all for less, often vastly less, than it'd cost to do stateside.

alwa 3y ago

I have to imagine that a skewer in the squishy parts could result in a wide range of potential injuries. Maybe the specific injury here was just an “x-ray and pliers” kind of job as you suggest, but suppose this particular skewer skewered one or more organs, or resulted in some kind of awful hemorrhage or something. I could just as easily imagine the sort of injury that would require intricate surgeries and a lengthy hospital recovery, implying the round-the-clock attention of a number of specialized humans with mouths to feed and other career prospects (including patching up human animals instead!). Euthanasia might be the only humane option in an x-ray-and-pliers outfit not staffed and equipped to perform such an heroic sort of intervention in the timeframe it would take to succeed. One thing that does stand out to me is the extreme shortage of people willing to become veterinarians, even at these prices. It seems like regardless of the pricing on the retail end, capable young people considering modern veterinary life are sizing up the entire financial, emotional, educational, and lifestyle bargain and not finding the payoff to be worth it. That said, I am sympathetic to the idea that modern veterinary practice has strayed too far from the way it’s done in lesser-resourced settings. Maybe it is more appropriate to set aside advanced and expensive medical techniques in favor of more cheaply-educated practitioners, more conventional business hours, simpler tools and supplies, more frequent recourse to euthanasia, and so on. The blessing and the curse of modern medicine, no? It’s bad enough to have to face death when it feels inevitable, when “all that can be done to save them” is relatively simple and well-understood. Knowing that the same situation might be survivable under different circumstances—with more money, or in a place with the right practitioner, or if we’d just had this particular exotic antivenom in stock, or if the line had been shorter that night, or if we could hire some bioengineers and a lab to custom-tailor a treatment to puppy’s genes… the same death then comes with a lingering feeling of guilt over the possibility that more could have been done.

somenameforme 3y ago
You're creating a false dichotomy. Animals swallowing things, being hit by vehicles, attacked by other animals, jumping from 8 story buildings (and living), and so on all cause similar groups of internal injuries - often life threatening. Yes it requires expertise and work to treat them - that's exactly what the job of a vet is. It's not like you go to a vet in the developing world with a puppy suffering severe internal injuries, from whatever reason, and they just shrug and ask if you want to euthanize. Quite the opposite I expect you'd see dramatically less euthanasia in the developing world (though a quick search unsurprisingly turned up very little in the way of data). But I think the logic should be clear enough. Pets make everybody's lives better and more enjoyable, but very few people could afford to even think about dropping $10,000 on a puppy. Those prices are just a fast-track to mass euthanasia and depressed vets.

jncfhnb 3y ago

> It's some x-rays, animal quality anesthesia/meds, and labor. It's hard to see how this reasonably adds up to $10,000. You should open a vet office then. Sounds like you’re well equipped to undercut competition and still make a hefty profit! Or maybe you’re just making things up. Because we’re talking about an emergency open and close surgery to remove what’s probably a long sharp object with puncturing of the stomach. On a small animal. On immediate short notice (cancel everything else!). It’s going to be difficult with multiple doctors. And it’s going to require a lot of post surgery care.